Voicemail Hack Scandal Leads To Closure of UK Tabloid

Some Bitch writes "Britain's biggest selling Sunday tabloid will close after this Sunday's issue. The tabloid has been embroiled in a voicemail hacking controversy for some time now and the news that they compromised the voicemail of a murdered schoolgirl and paid bribes to Metropolitan police officers for stories kicked off a renewed assault on the paper. The News Corp daily counterpart to Sunday's News of the World is the Sun; the domain sunonsunday.co.uk was registered two days ago."

Comments

Re:shell game...?

[Nick Ives]

Rebekah Brooks, née Wade, who was in charge at the time is already chief exec of News International. The current rumour mill is that the NOTW staff are being sacrificed in order to keep her safe. As to why Murdoch would go to such lengths to protect her, the thinking is that if she went then James Murdoch would also have to go. James Murdoch has admitted to paying settlements to silence people involved in the hacking affair; he claims that the information given to him at the time was incomplete and he didn't know the full extent.

Just so everyone is clear what's going on here, Members of Parliament have started talking openly about how they've been threatened by News International. A murder investigation into a private detective where the prime suspects were two other PIs with close ties to News International was interfered with by the NOTW. The former deputy features editor of the NOTW has openly admitted to bribing police to the tune of £5-10,000 for stories - something he doesn't believe should be illegal. Rebekah Brooks accidentally admitted to Parliament a few years ago that they regularly paid the police for stories, although in a clarification 6 months later that claim was retracted.

There's always been rumours around how Murdoch runs his empire, but now it's being blown wide open. News International runs more like a criminal conspiracy than a legitimate media organisation; they're basically gangsters.

Re:shell game...?

[Zocalo]

Actually, it's not so much the employees that interest me; it's the paperwork. Specifically, what is going to happen to all of the News of The World's emails, accounts and all of those other records that might be of use to, say, a public inquiry or police investigation? I can't help but wonder whether this knee jerk reaction on behalf of Rupert Murdoch is a desperate attempt at damage limitation because knowledge of what was going on goes a lot higher up the ladder than just former News of The World staff.

As an aside, The Guardian has a rather interesting piece on the use of private investigators by UK media from back in 2007 when things first kicked off. The NoTW only came in fifth behind those other stalwarts of quality UK journalism; The People, The Daily Mirror, The Mail on Sunday and, the run-away leader, The Daily Mail.